How British Rule Changed India S Economy

This Palgrave Pivot revisits the topic of how British colonialism moulded work and life in India and what kind of legacy it left behind. Did British rule lead to India’s impoverishment, economic disruption and famine? Under British rule, evidence suggests there were beneficial improvements, with an eventual rise in life expectancy and an increase in wealth for some sectors of the population and economy, notably for much business and industry. Yet many poor people suffered badly, with agricultural stagnation and an underfunded government who were too small to effect general improvements. In this book Roy explains the paradoxical combination of wealth and poverty, looking at both sides of nineteenth century capitalism. Between 1850 and 1930, India was engaged in a globalization process not unlike the one it has seen since the 1990s. The difference between these two times is that much of the region was under British colonial rule during the first episode, while it was an independent nation state during the second. Roy's narrative has a contemporary relevance for emerging economies, where again globalization has unleashed extraordinary levels of capitalistic energy while leaving many livelihoods poor, stagnant, and discontented.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

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From the end of the eighteenth century, two distinct global processes began to transform livelihoods and living conditions in the South Asia region. These were the rise of British colonial rule and globalization, that is, the integration of the region in the emerging world markets for goods, capital, and labour services. Two hundred years later, India was the home to many of the world's poorest people as well as one of the fastest growing market economies in the world. Does a study of the past help to explain the paradox of growth amidst poverty? The Economic History of India: 1857–2010 claims that the roots of this paradox go back to India's colonial past, when internal factors like geography and external forces like globalization and imperial rule created prosperity in some areas and poverty in others. Looking at the recent scholarship in this area, this revised edition covers new subjects like environment and princely states. The author sets out the key questions that a study of long-run economic change in India should begin with and shows how historians have answered these questions and where the gaps remain.